Head Coach JJ Redick Discussion: Spazzing Out

not sure if nba coaches can be successful thinking they're the driving force of success. maybe phil jackson is the exception that proves the rule?

in totally unrelated news, i see mike malone has taken a college job.

 

Look, I get that we as Lakers fans have to hate on the Denver Nuggets and all, but as a lifelong UNC fan first and foremost, I am genuinely hyped by that news!

 

Whatever



JK





With your tag here I was figuring you for U of Miami




Friedkin fan?

Who is Hurricane Billy

 

Ha! I am definitely a cinephile and Friedkin's old nickname is just too good a bit to pass up on for a username IMO.

But nah, I bleed Carolina Blue (and Purple & Gold too, of course). My dad actually went to Chapel Hill around the same time that James Worthy did.

 

not denver. just malone.

 

…I don’t get why the front office agreed to be a part of that little scheme with Woj and Hurley.

Hes a great coach and has an excellent basketball mind. UConn really shouldn’t be in the title game tonight but he’s got them
In a position to win another one. Definitely going in the college hall of fame.

I don’t think he’d work well with the pro game

 

Great photo for the conversation!!

 

yeah, he's clearly a good coach. i just REALLY don't like his public persona. i get that it takes confidence to succeed, but his arrogance is a real turnoff to me.

 

Seems the players responded to his criticism. Ayton caught the ball, Rui gave some defensive effort, Vando had a bounce back game.

 

We were up 22-25 with like 6-7mins. left in the game... and Bron was still on the floor. I guess Luka and AR being injured is not enough.

 

well, yes, but it had been bouncing around as a 10 point game mostly up until then, and lebron went out with six minutes left, iirc.

i didn't think he had a very good game, even by his standards. standard fumbles and some real head-scratching unforced turnovers trying to throw ahead in transition. maybe jj stressed that to him?

with reaves out, i'd also like to see bufkin more than bronny, but i've accepted that bufkin must be getting worked in the stay ready games or something. but bronny looks like he has ping pong paddles on his hands when he's trying to run the point against nba teams.

 

Back to back 50 win seasons. Buy in from the group even with some big changes in roles. Resilience by overcoming one injury after another. Schematics have been strong with some creative wrinkles.

I think he's done a damn good job.

Is he perfect? Nope. Not close. The minutes are too high and he's not that fond of young players. That said, what coach is fully realized at year 2?

Several coaches with hall of fame resumes hated rookies and young players too. And on the minutes front, the medical team repeatedly cleared the guys.

I want to see what the minutes look like with a legit roster with players worthy of trusting (we should have that next season). If he still runs the top guys into the ground then the complaint is justified. And I'm pretty sure this entire medical staff is getting canned this summer. They can go back to running the homeless van or whatever they did before they answered our minimum wage ad in the classifieds.

 

Great take

 

JJ sucks still for not playing Thiero.
I don’t care how many regular season wins we get- if we don’t start developing and keeping young players, we will NEVER build a deep enough team to beat either OKC, Los Spurs, nor Boston.

 

i'm pretty much with jsm on it. i think jj had a difficult job trying to transition lebron to draybron and having a roster full of guys on expiring contracts. that often goes much worse than this season did.

i don't like his overplay of the stars, but i'm also not like, 100% sure it was the reason for those injuries. our guys need to continue to work on their conditioning AND jj needs to work on being mindful of the load on the stars.

my main issue is that jj came in preaching development, and two years in, we've got basically nothing to show for that.

and again as jsm said, next year will be a big one for him, much like this summer is the big one for rob. both will be out if some of the same issues persist, imo. but i also think both have earned one more shot at it.

 

This "player development" narrative with JJ has become way overblown. You know who's developed really nicely under JJ and his staff? Austin Reaves. He's taken two big developmental leaps under JJ, who's empowered him to be the secondary ballhandler on this team ovr LeBron f***ing James to the point he's know an All-Star-ish caliber guard. What about Jaxson, who was a vet min, 3rd string caliber center but is now a quality backup center. I guess there's an arbitrary age cut off when we talk about player development here.

How about Max Christie. JJ gave him a legit shot to be in the regular rotation at the beginning of last season, but Max just didn't play well enough. JJ gave him another shot a month or two later and Max finally established himself as a legit rotation guy before we traded him. JJ gave Dalton the same opportunity at the beginning of last season and has given him chances the re-enter the rotation periodically over the last couple of seasons. Unfortunately, Dalton just sucks. You can't just blame the coach for a young player not getting better, sometimes they just suck. But we also have Bronny, whom everyone seems to agree has gotten noticeably better! I guess his development over the last two seasons just doesn't count either?

The Thiero part of this is the most annoying to me. In the NFL, it's widely accepted that certain QBs and even some WRs are better served sitting on the bench for all or most of their rookie years. The college game is so profoundly different than the pro game, especially for guys that rely on just outclassing their opponents athletically at the college level. It's the same thing in the NBA - playing young players in actual NBA games is not the only way to develop them, and often isn't the best way to develop them. Thiero was a dominant athlete at the college level who played 3 seasons for John Calipari, who's not exactly known as a great teacher of the game. He's maybe the best scout/talent identifier in college hoops history, but he's very much an assemble a team of 5-stars and then roll the ball out type of coach. So Adou was very much a project coming out of the draft, everyone knew this. Then he got hurt during his last season at Arkansas, was hurt all through the lead-up to the draft, hurt through the summer, hurt through training camp and then got hurt again during the season.

Right now Thiero is an athlete trying to play basketball, not an NBA basketball player. The best thing for him right now is to sit and watch how LeBron, or even Rui and Jake, leverage their size and athleticism within the structured offensive and defensive schemes. To focus on shootaround and film stufy until his brain catches up to NBA schematic complexity. To yes, spend most of his time in the G-League because the entire point of the G-League is to ease the transition between college style basketball and NBA basketball.

Everyone points to the C Bags as this player development model we should copy, which I agree with. Jordan Walsh, an athletic, defensive specialist pretty similar player to Thiero, appeared in 9 games his rookie year for the 2024 C Bags and averaged 9 minutes in those games. Thiero has appeared in 24 games for us at an average of 6 minutes per game. Seems about right to me. In contrast, Baylor Scheierman appeared in 31 games and averaged 12 minutes a game his rookie year for the 2025 C Bags. The difference is Baylor Scheierman was a pro-ready prospect, that was his whole thing during the draft. Drafting Adou Thiero and then complaining about him not getting minutes his rookie year is like drafting Dalton and then complaining that he's not a plus perimeter defender. You knew what he was when you drafted him.

This whole lack of player development narrative is really just about Dalton sucking IMO. If he was even just a decent 10th guy, I don't think we'd be talking about any of this. The "why isn't Bufkin playing more, why isn't Nick Smith playing more" stuff is kind of silly - these guys are cast offs that are probably going to be out of the league within the next few years. You can't be mad at the coach because the guy who got waived from the Hornets, and really hasn't shown anything when he has gotten minutes here, isn't playing every night. That guy probably just sucks. It's like if the Nuggets fans were complaining that KJ Simpson doesn't play more.